Restless Thoughts at 3 A M
by cccahill18
Summary: Molly Prewett's thoughts on life, love, and war on the night before her marriage to Arthur Weasley.


Disclaimer: I have not, do not, and will never own the rights to Harry Potter. Very sadly, this is the way of life, and I have (almost) accepted it.

A/N: Thanks to Samdum the Bouncing Hobbit for beta-ing this.

_Restless Thoughts at 3 A. M._

It was exactly ten hours and seventeen minutes until she was going to be wed, and Molly Prewett was beside herself with nerves. It was 2:43 A. M. according to the clock on her bedside table, and she felt as awake as if it were midday. Molly had been trying to get some sleep after her bridesmaids had insisted that she get some rest at 11 after their teary "girl talk" session (she was, after all, the first of her friends to be married), because no bride should have bags under her eyes on her wedding day, as her friend Althea Bones had so nicely put it. However, as Molly eventually discovered back at around 1:00 A. M., sleep was a luxury that she would most likely be deprived of on this night before her nuptial.

_You'd think I'd be exhausted from the last-minute preparations! This is getting ridiculous . . ._

She rolled onto her side and looked at the clock again. 2:45 A. M. Molly sighed, and tried yet again to find a cool and comfortable place among her crumpled blankets and sheets. Her body was covered in a thin layer of sweat, and her red ponytail looked more like a nest than human hair. The snoring of Emmeline Prewett, a close first cousin of hers, had been constant for nearly an hour and a half, and Althea's mumbled words in her sleep were really starting to get to her.

Molly lasted for a few more seconds in this condition before finally giving an irritated grunt and flinging the blankets off of her body. Carefully, she made her way through her tiny bedroom (that would only be hers for this one last night), making sure to avoid her two bridesmaids in their blankets on the floor. Slowly, as not to make it creak, Molly unlocked the latch to her window and began to lift it open. When it was about a third of the way open, it jammed in the same place as it had always done, ever since she could remember. She strained her arms to get the window past that particular spot, and accidently slammed it up the rest of the way once it was unjammed. Molly stood still in complete silence for perhaps thirty seconds, hoping that she hadn't woken her friends. Though she felt as if both Althea and Emmeline knew her inside and out, could list off all of her dirty little secrets, and loved her like their own sisters, this was time that she needed for herself.

The air outside felt like heaven on Molly's warm skin as she slid through the window and onto the roof. Though it was nearly July, the nights in this corner of the world were always cool around this time, all the way through the summer. Careful to keep her balance, she shimmied over the shingles to her usual spot a few meters to the left of her bedroom window. Though it had been overcast that evening, the clouds had cleared, leaving the summer sky awash with possibly hundreds of thousands of stars.

She lay back, with her hands behind her head. Even before she had gone off to Hogwarts seven years ago, she had been able to pick out the constellations of the southwest English skies without a problem, thanks to Gideon and Fabian.

_Damn, why do I have to think of them now? _thought Molly, her newly found serenity shattered. When it came to grief, there were only two options for Molly Prewett. One was to remember, though even happy memories led to the tragic ones eventually. She could simply be thinking of something as simple as her de-gnoming the garden or baking in the kitchen or knitting socks and it would lead to something that reminded her of her brothers, which would in turn come to something they had done directly before their deaths, were planning to do later, or was directly related to when or where they had been killed.

It was thoughts like these that Molly had always had a problem with. Ever since she was very young, Molly had never been good with handling tragedy. She could remember when one of her brothers' friends had accidentally knocked down a bird's nest with a quaffle while playing quidditch one summer, and her, being the six-year-old that she was, started bawling when she saw the cracked eggs on the ground. It had taken her almost a month before she stopped leaking tears down her cheeks whenever she passed by that particular tree in her backyard. This is what led Molly to her second method of coping.

This was prevent something from happening in the first place, and then to block it from entering your thoughts if it did. Of course, this wasn't always the easiest to do, since you'll usually think of something more if you really don't want to in the first place. But, as Molly had first discovered back with the incident of the broken eggs, persistence eventually paid off, in this case whether it was singing one of her favorite songs while running by, or pretending that there was an evil monster living in the woods that would eat her if she didn't run away fast enough (which she half-believed anyway at this time due to her brothers). However well this may work on unborn birds, it was becoming increasing more difficult to keep up.

When You-Know-Who had started to become more and more prominent to the point where you would be in denial if you said that the wizarding world was not at war, looking the other way becomes quite a bit harder. You eventually are forced to see that the death of birds is much unlike the death of people. It isn't as evident when the deaths you hear about in the papers and in gossip are those of second cousins four times removed and parents of classmates you don't even know the names of. Things become increasing more difficult, though, when those second cousins four times removed become cousins and the parents of miscellaneous students become the parents of the friends in your dormitory. Then, when evil so close to home that you don't know if you can stand it . . ._This bloody war . . . everything would be fine if You-Know-Who hadn't come._

Molly scowled, and squeezed her eyes shut. She didn't want to think about her brothers, You-Know-Who, or the war she and her loved ones were fighting in. And yet, her mind was blank of distractions. Everything around Molly in the nighttime air seemed to want to suck all of what she had kept covered up to exposure on the surface.

When the tears came moments later, there was nothing Molly could think of doing to stop them. Now, in the darkness and silence that was 3 A. M., Molly was powerless to end her expression of grief._ Oh Merlin, I wish Arthur could be here . . ._

Molly sniffed, and tried to wipe her eyes with the sleeve of her nightgown. Arthur, her soon-to-be husband. They had just started dating when Gideon and Fabian had been killed nearly eight months ago, and since then he had always been there when she couldn't occupy her mind and just needed to cry. She usually wasn't crying for too long around him, though, with his personality. Arthur was always going on with such enthusiasm on the strangest topics, from pictures that stood still (imagine!) to fellytones (whatever those were). To her, it was impossible not to have his infectious smile catch on after a bit.

When he had proposed to her during their Easter holiday, her parents especially had been worried that they were rushing things, and that they had plenty of time to bring their relationship further. After all, they were both only eighteen, and would have only just graduated from Hogwarts when they were wed. _That's what Gideon and Fabian thought, too, that they had plenty of time,_ Molly mused, thinking back. She and Arthur had ignored the concerns of their parents, and, in staying with tradition, planned their wedding for June. And now, the day had come, early as it was into it.

_Tomorrow really should be swell, a nice break from everything . . .I hope Mum did all right with the cake . . . Arthur's going to love my dress, he hasn't seen it yet . . . he says it's all a silly thing, but I know he's just kidding . . .hopefully we can be done with this war soon, get rid of You-Know-Who . . . start a family . . . _

With a final yawn, Molly's eyelids drooped down, carrying her down into sleep. If it hadn't been for the troublesome birds at 4:30, she would have stayed in that same position for much longer, but instead she sleepily crawled back over the roof and into her window. Keeping it open, she stumbled through the room, almost stepped on Althea's stomach, and curled up on her bed. Not even wedding jitters could keep her up now, her late-night insomnia catching up to her. Slumber's gentle embrace kept her in that position for an hour more, until Althea and Emmeline, fully rested, jumped on her bed to announce that, for them at least, her wedding day had come.

The End


End file.
